Face

by Aimee Liu

  I snatched it, spun, and ran away before he could say another word.

  Without turning back I could see Tommy’s startled eyes, the sudden straightening of his body, the sneakers lifting and falling, hitting the pavement faster, faster. Dodging bodies and cars, I skirted the Criminal Courts Building, headed west out of Chinatown, then south and back. I’d traveled ten blocks before I turned to make sure I’d lost him. Then I stopped and blew my nose hard, wiped my eyes.

  The handkerchief was embroidered with the Wah name in Chinese characters surrounded by a circle of pale green rosettes. It was crumpled now, soggy and disgusting. Though I knew I should wash and iron it, give it back, my mind started to whirl with the complications—the possibilities for losing it in the Laundromat, the inevitable questions if my mother found it, the ridicule from Henry and Anna if they caught me pressing it. Henry would know it was Tommy’s, and the cycle would start all over again. Only this time it wouldn’t be worth the pain.

  I balled the cloth in my fist, shoved it into an empty paper bag I found on top of a garbage can, buried the bag under a pile of orange rinds. And walked slowly to Catherine Street.

  I had never mentioned Johnny to Li, so I didn’t expect him to understand or sympathize. But he knew, instantly, that something was wrong. He pursed his mouth, the sides turning down, lips thrust out in a grotesque air-kiss. He didn’t offer me a cookie or start winding up for a story.

  He stared at me for a minute or two, then said, “You have Chinese writing set.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about.

  “Brush. Ink. Stone. You know—Chinese writing set. Bring that here. I will teach you write Chinese.”

  It dawned on me that he was talking about the basket in our basement.

  “How—?”

  “Never mind, never mind. You go home, get that writing set. I have present for you.”

  I let his instructions stop my thinking, erase my fears. I followed them swiftly, but when I returned, a wall of black clouds had blocked the sun, and a cold wind churned up from the river.

  “Good,” Lao Li said. “Rain is bad for customers, good for lessons.” He had cleared his desk as if he expected to devote the whole afternoon to instruction.

  “You sit here.” He arranged a plump silk pillow in his chair to boost me to working height and settled himself on a stool by my side. Then he took the basket of writing tools and slid open the top.

  “Your papa has shown you how to use?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “He never write Chinese?”

  “No.”

  Lao Li wagged his head as he fingered the basket’s contents. The movement of his hands was so full of respect that I was embarrassed by the memory of Anna and me dueling with the brushes. He took each one in turn, rolled the wooden handle between his thumb and forefinger, spit on the fingers of his other hand and used the spittle to smooth the bristles down to a perfect point. There were four brushes in all, each the length of my forearm but ranging in width from fat to skinny.

  “Like people.” Lao Li arranged them on the desk. He pointed to the biggest brush. “This one very rich. He eat too much, move slow, but very, very elegant.” He pointed to the skinny brush. “He never have enough to eat, always work too much. He run fast, crazy. Both speak same words, make same pictures, but talk very different.”

  “So which do I use?”

  He looked me up and down as if he’d never seen me before, then picked up a midsize brush.

  “Not too fast, not too slow. Not too big, not too little.” He smiled.

  I picked up one of the ink sticks and rolled it between my fingers the way he’d rolled the brushes. A black chrysanthemum spread its petals beneath a black bird in flight, beneath a seal stamped gold. The carved edges resisted the pressure of my skin. But one end of the stick had been worn smooth, cutting off the top of the seal, replacing gold with air.

  Lao Li placed a small lacquer cup on the desk, filled it with water from a jug by his side, then reached into the basket for the oval brass box that contained the inkstone. In one half a tiny pond of slate, in the other a dirty field of silk down. He took the brush and dabbed it in the water, painted the stone and took the ink, skated it, gold down, around the pond. His whole arm traced the circle one way, once, twice, three times, then the other, once, twice, three times. I watched the slate push into the gold, the sky below the flying bird shrink as a wash of black mud thickened across the surface of the pond.

  Mr. Li’s fingertips were clean. He placed the ink stick back in the basket and reached into his top drawer.

  “Your present,” he said. “Please. Open.”

  A calligraphy primer. Page after page of sheer, almost transparent paper sectioned into squares, each square filled with the dotted outline of a basic character, with arrows to direct the brush. Paint by arrow, except there were no colors and the picture was not a picture but a word.

  “First number.” Lao Li pointed at page one (back page), square one (right column), and in it the dotted outline of a single horizontal line. “Yi. One. Very easy.”

  He took the brush and placed it upright in my hand. Automatically I repositioned it as I would a pencil. He held the stem up and gripped my hand, forcing the fingers into position along the wood.

  “Brush must always point to heaven,” he said. “If not, how can gods help you?”

  He guided my arm to dip the brush in water, rolled it against the silk to taper the bristles, then slid them through the ink.

  “You write number one,” he said. “Like this.” And in the air he moved his arm in a conductor’s downbeat followed by a slight lift and sideways sweep, finishing up at the level where he’d started. “Now you do.”

  I held the brush the way he showed me and drew a line across the square. The ink squirted over the borders, making a large blob.

  “Hmm.” Lao Li gave me a look, adjusted the brush in my hand again, and drew a line in the air flat above the desk. “Here is paper. Now, like this—” and, grabbing me at the elbow, he pushed my arm through the motion he himself had just shaped.

  “Like dancing,” he said. “You dance in air, your feet make Chinese writing.”

  “You have to be a ghost to dance in air.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Be ghost.”

  There were four more squares in the column with the outline of number one. I tried again.

  The ink still went over the borders, but it was more of a smudge than a squirt.

  “Better.” Lao Li repositioned the brush and moved my arm above the next square. “Again.”

  Yi. Er. San.One line. Two lines. Three lines. Now I was too far inside the borders.

  “No good,” Li said. “Too little, too much is not just right.”

  “How can drawing a line be so hard!”

  “You think too much, try too much. Let brush and ink think, you will do better.”

  “Maybe I’m just not good at this.”

  “Your grandfather was great scholar. Maybe these his brushes and ink. ‘No good’ is no excuse for you. You know? You work hard, think less, you be okay.”

  Once again he seemed to know more about my family than I did, but I’d given up asking how he came by these details.

  “It’s too much like art. I’m not good at art.”

  “Not art,” he said. “Come.”

  He took my hand and led me out into the gathering thunderstorm. “Chinese writing is like wind and rain.” He lifted my palm toward the east. Push push release. Push push push release. Push release.

  I felt the rhythm of the weather changing in my bones.

  “Like sound.” He raised my hand to his lips and counted: “Yi. Er. San. Si. Wu. Liu. Oi. Ba. Jiu. Shi.”

  I felt the rhythm of Lao Li’s words moving beneath my fingertips.

  “Like breath.” He placed my hand on my chest. Up down. Up down. Up down.

  I felt the rhythm of my own life. Strong, steady, stable.

  “Everything connect.” Li
linked his fingers. “You breathe alone. I breathe alone. But is all same breath.” He grinned and whipped up the wind with his arm.

  “Old time, new time,” he said. “All same time.”

  The rain, which had been a fine drizzle, turned to heavy drops.

  “Water in clouds, in river. But is all same water.” He caught a handful and pushed it through his hair. The wetness glistening on his forehead made him look vibrant, not exactly younger but as if he’d been mystically freshened. It was like some kind of blessing.

  Li stuck out his tongue and drank the rain. Dirty rain, city rain, I thought—but never mind. I, too, threw back my head, let the downpour soak my face and hair.

  And wept again for Johnny. For the knowledge that he would have loved this moment; for the faith I still did not quite have that my father and Li were right about Johnny always being there with me, around in his own way.

  We stayed like this as the storm pressed on. Lao Li laughed as I wept and the rain washed away my tears.

  The weather was clearing when my father found us. I’d stopped crying. Li and I were not talking, just standing side by side and watching the sunshine patch through the clouds. I didn’t notice Dad until he called my name, but Li’s whole body was turned as if he’d been tracking him for some distance. Li’s lips were parted, showing just a sliver of gold teeth. His eyes were open wider than I could remember seeing them, and he didn’t blink. With his hair slicked back by the rain he looked hungry. Starving.

  My father slowed as he neared our end of the block. He was wearing one of those dime-store pocket raincoats that never unwrinkle, an ugly pinkish color with his checked shirt showing through. The hood had fallen back so his hair and face were drenched. I thought, this was how he would look if he cried.

  Dad called my name again but he wasn’t looking at me. He was squinting at Li and his arms were moving mechanically, almost like a soldier’s.

  It didn’t occur to me to go forward to meet him. I felt as if I hadn’t moved in weeks, not that I couldn’t but there seemed no need to. The act of breathing seemed enough. I might have been in the audience watching my father and Li in a movie.

  “I got worried with the rain.” Dad was panting a little. “Are you all right?”

  “She is all right,” said Li quietly. “How are you?”

  My father didn’t answer, and now that he was with us he stopped looking at Li. He bent his legs until he reached my level. He touched my sopping hair and shirt.

  “You must be freezing.” His voice was a low, worried grumble. I shook my head. I felt perfectly warm. “It’s time to come home, Mei Mei.”

  “Mei Mei?” Li nodded approvingly.

  We formed a triangle the way we were standing. Li was staring at my father, my father at me. I looked back and forth. Only then did I realize that Dad might not know Li and I were friends. And then I remembered I was disobeying him by being here.

  “I feel better,” I said.

  But he didn’t sound angry. “Your mother will be back soon. She’ll be frantic if you’re gone.”

  “How is Diana?” Li asked as if he were an old friend of the family’s.

  My father and I both stared at him. From the beginning Li had asked me about my father, my brother and sister, but never mentioned my mother. I’d decided he either didn’t know she existed or else thought of her as another white witch.

  Again, Dad didn’t answer. He reached for my hand, then reeled me in, first the wrist, elbow, shoulders, until he had me clasped in a hug that stopped my breathing. When he let go, his eyes were wet, and not from the rain.

  “I’m okay, Dad.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “You are welcome, of course,” said Lao Li.

  My father led me away. He didn’t ask what I was doing with Li, and he didn’t forbid me to see him again. But just a few months later he sold his bottle cap patent. We left Chinatown within the year.

  Part V

  Chinaman’s Whore

  14

  I received this letter this morning.

  Maibelle Love,

  During afternoon darshan today I saw your face so clearly, heard your complaint, felt your sadness and anger, I decided the Buddha wanted me to connect with you, and the Big D concurred. How I wish you would try a different path to the truth you are seeking. Since I surrendered to the Dhawon I have been blessed by such light and acceptance. It has cleansed me of all vile thought and confusion. Transformation is the way to enlightenment, Maibelle. You must step out of your past self as if it were a suit of ill-fitting old clothes. Leave behind what happened. The Dhawon says there are too many bodies for this planet, anyway, and too few of us fit to raise those already born. Children deserve joy and truth and harmonic bliss. If we ourselves have not yet attained enlightenment, then we have no right to create new life. This is why I have followed the Dhawon’s wisdom and had myself sterilized. It is why you must not mourn or punish yourself for what is past. The new life you are creating now is your own, Maibelle. You must die to rational thought, expectation, convention. Move beyond death to the wholly compassionate welcoming grace of the Buddha, yourself, and the Universal Now.

  Peace be with you.

  Your loving sister,

  Aneela Prem

  My brother was no help at all.

  “How could you?”

  “Maibelle, calm. Breathe deeply. Transcend.”

  “Cut the crap. Why Anna, of all people?”

  “Darling, I never told a soul. Not that I can see what the big deal is. Now, if you’d had the kid—”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I told you. Not a soul.”

  “That includes Mum and Dad?”

  “No, they’ve got souls, at least last time I checked.”

  “Asshole.”

  “Atta girl.”

  “No one?”

  “No.”

  I listened, weighing his silence as if it were a lie detector. He had Smokey Robinson on. “Tears of a Clown.”

  I said, “Well. While we’re on the subject, you might think about getting that operation of yours reversed.”

  “Do tell.”

  “Anna’s had one, too. As it stands I’m this family’s last hope of succession.”

  “Any prospects?”

  “Not that I’d tell you. How’s Coralie.”

  “I appreciate the confidence. Likewise, I’m sure. Don’t spend it all in one place.”

  My brother’s wit won’t crack the code of my sister’s message. I want to believe it’s just cult babble, but there’s something behind her words that unnerves me. Like a five-dollar fortune-teller who know things she can’t possibly know but refuses to tell what they mean. This is my first letter from Anna since she stopped acknowledging birthdays as part of some spiritual indoctrination ten years ago.

  I would call her, but there are no phones at her ashram, and the nearest town is some twenty miles away.

  It’s four in the morning, and I won’t sleep again tonight. I’ve just had a new dream about Johnny. It starts all right. We’re lying together beneath a huge globe. His hands are outstretched, white and transparent, full of deep blue veins. I try to touch him, but he leaps to his feet, starts running. I follow him over long green lawns toward a line of ocean. He slows to a walk, but doesn’t stop at the shore. He walks on water.

  “It’s okay,” he calls back over his shoulder. “Who needs China? Come on!”

  He stops to wait for me, digs his toes into the ocean. He wears torn blue jeans and a white T-shirt, his hair a mop of light.

  I run along the beach, looking for a way out to him. He continues on and I trail him. The waves lap at my feet. I sink into sand. He keeps going, farther, farther out, and I keep after him, but now I feel someone’s breath against the back of my neck, pressing forward, closer.

  “Stay with me,” he calls. “Don’t look back! You can marry me in your dreams.”

  I run until the breath from behind pours through me, burning my
throat and crushing my chest. I let it pull me down. Johnny sinks beyond the horizon.

  Then unseen hands turn my head around to a face as white as eggshell, with straw hair and blackened teeth. Eyes that glitter like jewels.

  Henry’s basement bogeyman.

  Dear Anna,

  I appreciate your letter and the concern behind it, but I am confused. What, exactly, must I leave behind? What is all this business about children? I am not angry. I really don’t know what you are talking about, so I’d appreciate an explanation in clearer, more basic terms. There seems to be a lot I don’t remember these days, a lot I am trying to understand.

  I’m sorry we argued when you were here. I miss you, Anna.

  Your sister,

  Maibelle

  There have been no further chopsticks lessons, no more parties, though I have seen Tai’s friends in the street and they always greet me by name and stop for a casual chat. Once when I was walking alone back to my apartment, I saw Lin Cheng outside Dean and Deluca on Prince Street. I thanked her again for the sumptuous feast, apologized for taking so long with her book jacket photograph. “Oh, you are welcome,” she answered. “Any friend of Tai’s is friend of ours. I was just joking about the picture, anyway. I don’t really need one.” She meant it kindly, but the underlying statement hurt. In my own mind I still have not passed the point of needing a house key, a mission, a sponsor to gain entrance. If I tried to go back alone, I’d again feel eyes burning like switchblades into the small of my back.

  But I also know I have to keep going. Marge tells me so. And the White Witch. She and her children fill the mantelpiece. Li lied, she assures me. The white witches did not cast their children out to wander forever in the ether between the living and the dead; they were good mothers, watchful mothers. The men simply misunderstood. China men. White men. Those were the two worlds between which the women were forced to wander with their children. But the children bore the blood of both worlds, and that gave them the right of safe passage. The children are the lucky ones, their mother reassures me, if they could only see.